


found

by pseudocitrus



Category: Tokyo Ghoul, Tokyo Ghoul:re
Genre: AU, Eye Injury (mild), F/M, Self-Harm, dubcon (cuz kaneki is sick)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-27
Updated: 2018-01-27
Packaged: 2019-03-10 07:17:23
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,811
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13497322
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pseudocitrus/pseuds/pseudocitrus
Summary: It took careful planning, but they manage it, somehow, they escape even the Reaper and race back, bloody but successful. When they tuck him into :re’s spare room, Kaneki, with pale hair and a bandage over his eyes, is officially saved from Cochlea —Or so Touka wants him, desperately, to understand.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> inspired by 240/touka headcanons from neimana, ofc :')
> 
> hope you're having a good day!

It took careful planning, but they manage it, somehow, they escape even the Reaper and race back, bloody but successful. When they tuck him into :re’s spare room, Kaneki, with pale hair and a bandage over his eyes, is officially saved from Cochlea —

Or so Touka wants him, desperately, to understand.

“Kaneki,” she calls softly, “Kaneki, Kaneki,” and eventually he stirs, though it seems less because of the sound of his name and more because of the mere sound of her voice, which he follows on his hands and knees.

Then again, maybe it’s not even about her voice at all. His nostrils are flaring. It takes some effort for her not to shrink away when he claws at the meat in her hands, which she learned on the first day she should unwrap for him, or else he would just gulp down the paper too, like an animal.

Still, this is an improvement. When they first hauled him in here he thrashed with every limb and cried so loudly he could be heard downstairs in the cafe area. Touka tried to stay with him, murmuring encouragingly — “ _Kaneki, it’s me — Kaneki, it’s okay, it’s okay, it’s me, you’re home,_ ” but whatever the Doves did to him rendered him somehow unable to understand her or do anything more than weep and hold himself so tightly he was tearing through the yukata Yomo had struggled to wrestle onto him. He almost tore through her too, when she tried to stop her. Her eyes stung. They closed :re and prayed none of their neighbors would complain about the noise. Eventually, finally, she woke up and raced up in panic to open the door to a silent room, expecting to see him dead. At the time, it was a relief to see him passed out on the floor in the corner. She neared him and saw his fingers, and the bandage over his eyes, were stained a dark, fresh red.

Presently, the bandage she just changed is clean, and white, and doesn’t seem to be a hindrance to him. This kind of improvement is heartening, even if he’s yet to recover in other ways. He eats his food, messily, slurping, staining his cheeks and palms. The cafe was busy today and finally she took the risk of leaving Yomo down there alone to handle things while she brought Kaneki a late dinner, and she regrets her hesitation, because he seems hungrier than usual.

“That’s it, Kaneki,” she murmurs, “that’s it. Good. Great.” It’s not really her style, but she keeps on talking to him, rambling, just in case it helps him to hear a voice, even though he doesn’t respond to her like he understands her.

“Good, good. That’s it. Keep eating, Kaneki,” she says, though he seems to be chewing through everything without needing much encouragement. This kind of thing is harder for Yomo to do so she tries to put extra effort into it. “Good, kaneki. I have no idea what they were feeding you back there, but this good for you. Keep eating like this and you’ll…you’ll heal in no time. You’ll be back to your old…annoying self.”

He chews and swallows loudly. Touka watches.

“I’ve been collecting a lot of books for you downstairs, you know,” she tells him. “Just ones I heard were good. You’ve probably read them all already, but…I don’t know, maybe you…forgot those too.”

Her gaze drops. Soon he gets through the single package she brought and is licking his lips and hands. He turns his head up to her. He crawls closer. He takes a deep breath.

“Do you want more?” Touka asks, pleased. “I’ll get more for you. Right now I don’t have anymore — see?” She holds out her empty hands indicatively, and then grimaces at his eye bandage. “Uh, well…I mean…”

But her comment doesn’t bother him. He pushes his face forward, straight into her right hand, and, to her shock, begins licking it. Her spine jolts as his tongue works, cleaning up all traces of the meat, hot and wet: curling into the creases of her palm, guiding each finger into his mouth to suck and lapping at the space between them. Touka feels her body shiver, feels her face get painfully hot.

“K-Kaneki.” She coughs. She forgot to talk to him. “You’re, um…really hungry, huh, Kaneki.” When he is done, she offers him her other hand.

Soon both her hands are free of any trace of food. He keeps them anyway, placing them together, putting his face into them. The feeling of his brows and nose nuzzling her is — weirdly intimate. Embarrassing. She feels him inhale, and then he pulls her a little, smells her wrists and then reels her in and rolls up her sleeve, manages to sniff the inside of her elbow before she is able to yank herself back. She’s blushing fully now, and glad that he can’t see it. Or smell it, as it were.

“I really don’t have any more food, Kaneki,” she says firmly, when he turns up to her. His mouth opens, maybe with surprise. Or just to indicate he’s still hungry.

“Don’t worry, I’ll — I’ll get you more,” Touka tells him. “Just wait here.”

She clears her throat. She can’t let herself get…distracted. This is good, really, this is great, sometimes he can’t even get through half a package in her presence, just ends up choking after a couple mouthfuls and curling up into a shaking ball. But when she stands to head back down to the fridge, he cries out — a wordless noise, brimming with panic. She jumps and when she turns back to him, she’s too late — he’s lunging — to her shock, he clutches her legs, wrapping his arms around them, with obvious supplication.

“Kaneki,” she gasps, “Kaneki, it’s okay. You ate all the food I brought, so I’m just going to get you more,” but when she tries to move he just grips her harder. His nails dig, ripping into her tights, and — deeper. Touka gasps in pain. She tries to take a step and, can’t. He’s — so  _strong_  — and grabbing — even tighter. She feels warmth trickle down her leg. She’s bleeding,  _bleeding_ ,  _Kaneki hurt her_ , Kaneki would — would have never done this but she realizes she doesn’t entirely know whoever it is that’s with her now, and they don’t know her either.

She repeats it, choking, “You let go, let go,  _let go_ ,” and still he doesn’t. His face is pushing against the back of her thigh now and with panic she remembers that wasn’t just human meat that Kaneki ate before, the rumors that reached her at Anteiku were filled with certainty that he was swallowing ghouls left and right, and when he opens his mouth next she can’t help it, her body doesn’t wait for him to hurt her again, she punches him right in the face, but this only makes him claw her deeper, so she punches him again, and again, until he loosens enough that she can kick him. He cringes — falls back — and Touka races away, shouting.

“N-nii-san — Yomo —  _Yomo_!”

She hears a cup shatter downstairs; she hears him dash up. When he finds her, she’s already slammed the door shut, and is sitting against it, shaking, in a growing puddle of her own blood. The door rattles as Kaneki throws his body against it, and he howls, with what sounds like misery, and hunger.

:::

Yomo is the one who feeds him next — he beats her to the fridge, and looks at her as if waiting for her argument, and she finds that she can’t make it. Touka does follow him upstairs, though, and waits while he opens the door and trudges in. She hears the thud of the wrapped-up meat hitting the floor, and she hears a small, barely audible whimper in response. Yomo pauses. The floor creaks. He re-emerges from the room without event, carrying something. Touka’s heart drops. She knows what it is even before he holds it out to her: the bandage from over Kaneki’s eyes. stained a fresh, dark red.

“Get a new one,” Yomo says. “Get a lot, because he scratched himself up again, too. And…bring a mop. It’s a mess in there. I’ll clean up.”

Silently, Touka obeys.

:::

She keeps her distance, then. Yomo feeds him, and she tells herself this is better for him — he didn’t respond to her interacting with him anyway. By visiting so much, calling him by his name so much, she was letting her own selfish hopes and then her fears get in the way of his recovery. All she wanted was Kaneki back and instead, as usual, again, she’d fucked up and punched him in the face.

 _He wouldn’t have hurt me,_  she tells herself, furiously.  _There’s no way he would have, you idiot, you stupid…how could you have let your emotions get the better of you? Again?_

In the cafe, she can tell that regulars are noting her fallen mood but she can’t bring herself to perk up anyway. After hours, she scrubs dishes furiously, blinks hard, and is so absorbed that she doesn’t notice the time until she checks her phone and realizes she received a text a while back. She wipes her hands and checks. It’s Yomo.

_Sorry I’m late. I can’t find any meat so I won’t be back until late tonight. Please feed Ken what we have left._

Touka looks down at the phone. It’s late — really late. She grits her teeth. Why hadn’t she noticed this? She’s so stupid — Kaneki should have been fed hours ago. He’s probably starving.

She leaves a half-cleaned cup in the sink and rushes off.

:::

There’s only half a package of meat in the fridge, which she’d been looking forward to eating herself once the cafe was closed up. She jogs up the stairs with it, undoing the tape, and then goes quiet and listens at the door. Silence.

 _No…not silence._  There’s some kind of soft noise beyond, a sound like…crying. Touka swallows and takes a breath.

 _Don’t panic,_  she tells herself. She opens the door.

Kaneki is there — in his usual corner — a huddled mass, curled up, shaking. At the sound of the door opening he doesn’t even straighten. Touka’s chest aches. She was intending to just leave the meat, but…. She closes the door and steps forward, and confirms what she saw in the shadows: his hands are bloody. He’s scratching again, though fortunately, his eye bandage still seems clean, if a little damp. She kneels beside him and rests a hand on his trembling shoulder.

“Kaneki,” she calls softly, and he jerks up, and Touka jumps, startled. He scrambles up, propping himself on his arms, slipping a bit at first but then managing it. He raises a hand into the air, as if to touch her, but then it curls back into itself, uncertain.

 _He’s afraid of me._  Touka makes her voice as gentle as possible.

“Don’t worry,” she says, “I’m not here to bother you, I just brought you dinner,” and at the sound of that, he flings his arms around her, tight. The meat falls. Touka stiffens and recoils but his grip keeps her, this time without tearing. He is sobbing outright, right into her ear. And — and he’s  _speaking_.

“Kaneki,” she gasps, and then she quiets, to try and make sense of the muddle he’s repeating over and over and over.

“A…a-alive…alive…alive…alive, alive.”

“Ah…yeah,” Touka tells him. She takes a chance and pets his back, carefully. “Yes. You’re alive.”

“No,” he says, as clear as day. “No, you…you…”

The lower half of his face gleams with how many tears he’s shedding. “You…alive.”

Her. Alive. Touka stares, too startled to respond, and Kaneki’s expression falters. He releases her, but only for a moment — in the next his hands are on her again, her face, her ears, her hair, her neck, her belly and hips and, even, her breasts, as if trying to confirm the shape of her to himself, and even then his breathing starts to quicken in terror until she gets a hold of herself and tells him, “Yeah, yeah, it’s me, I’m here. I’m here, Touka is here,” and she realizes it now, starkly, what it must have felt like to him, to hear her every day and then suddenly, not.

“I’m here,” she repeats, finding her voice break a little, “I’m here, I’m here,” but he doesn’t stop caressing her, and at loss she returns his every contact, touch for touch — stroking his arms, careful to avoid the raw scratches — cradling his face and lips — pressing the tips of her fingers to his brows and then, even, to the collarbones showing as his yukata slips over one shoulder.  _It’s okay, it’s okay, it’s okay._  He pushes his face against her and breathes as if trying to memorize not just the feel but also the scent of her, and she loses her balance. She falls back and he falls atop her, his face buried into her chest, still clinging to her.

If it was any other time — any other person — even any other Kaneki — she might have slapped him away. As it is, the tighter Kaneki pushes his face into her breasts, the more she feels a pressure there, the more she feels something threaten to shatter. She blinks hard and cradles his face there.

“I’m here,” she tells him again, “don’t worry, I’m fine and I’m here,” and Kaneki cries something like, “Don’t…please…don’t…” and she assures him again: “I won’t leave. It’s alright. I made a mistake before, I’m sorry, okay?” She strokes his head and keeps murmuring it, “It’s okay, it’s okay,” close to his head, and then, because her heart feels overflowing, because her selfishness is swelling, she presses her mouth to his hair as she says it, “It’s okay,” and then she kisses his brow as she says it, “It’s okay.”

Kaneki is in such a state that she expected he wouldn’t even notice her pushing it this way, but his body goes rigid immediately. Touka swallows as his face turns up to her, mouth slightly open, conveying, probably, his shock. Touka grimaces.

“Sorry,” she mutters quickly, “I —“

She doesn’t finish. Kaneki interrupts her, himself — he pushes his face up to hers, blindly — his mouth crashes to the right of hers, but he corrects, and the next time he moves they kiss, fully, once, and then twice, harder. His mouth opens just as Touka takes a breath and their next kiss shelters the press of their tongues together, gentle, with a certain held-breath tension. Then Kaneki dives at her again and Touka gives it freely, feeling, suddenly, hungry for the taste of him — as if it were her dinner that came late — as if she hadn’t eaten in months.

Kaneki is making small noises every time their lips meet and though his helpless sounds have broken her heart before, these, somehow, are different — she finds herself breaking to hear them, but not in any way that reminds her of how she felt when she realized she was the one that had to clean out Kaneki’s locker at Anteiku. She is breaking, but not the same way she broke realizing she’d spent the better part focusing not on her schoolwork but on the rainy towers visible from her apartment window. The kind of shatter she has now is a particular one that she remembers well, from the time he murmured to her in Anteiku’s alley, a single phrase that was almost lost the grumble and sigh of the city.

“ _If you died…I’d be sad._ ”

So when Kaneki’s hands paw blindly at her, when they rest on her chest and squeeze, with fascination, with raw greed, she finds herself pushing him back only as long as it takes for her to shrug off her cardigan and wrestle her shirt off completely. His fingers curl around and then into the cups of her bra and his face reddens and at first she thinks it’s with some understanding of his own gall but then their bodies shift, he presses up against her a little  _more_ , and she knows, even before the yukata spreads apart below his belly and reveals himself to her. She purses her lips, licks them.

“So it feels good?” she murmurs. “How about this?”

She uses her hands to part the sides of his yukata like a curtain, and leans up to kiss the divot just beneath his chest, and then up, on every ridge of his sternum, with her eyes turned up to study his reaction. He makes it again, the helpless noise, and quivers. His face turns even redder and his hands drop, stroking her bare shoulders and back, fervently, as if giving outlet to the feelings welling up in him that he still can’t put into words.

Their bodies turn, fall, together. There have been weeks of her curled up in her bed, thinking about Kaneki curled not too far away from her, and now they twist together, a gentle intertwining, natural despite his lack of sight. They simply follow the push and slide and hook of each other’s fingers easing things off: her bra, which she unfastens, for him; the yukata belt; her tights, and underwear, and with them, the last layer between them. By the time they meet he is even harder, enough so that, even though she feels desperate for him, she cringes: taking him in is like inhaling too big a gulp of air. She makes herself exhale and for a moment that’s all there is — the two of them — panting, somehow — balancing precariously over the drop.

When hr body settles around him, she coaxes him to move, first with a whisper, and then with a gentle press against his lower back that makes him shudder and swell in a way that makes her feel abruptly delirious. He aches forward, gently, and then with as much fervor as he ever had taking the food from her hands, suckling at every last taste. She whines his name at first with every stroke, as frantically as she ever had in her mind when she searched the skylines for him, and even that falls apart on her tongue as she loses herself to him, spreading herself farther, pulling him in deeper, begging him with her clutching to make every thrust rougher than the last, even as they grind against each other so hard that the bandage over his eyes begins to loosen. It slips, down one eye and then the other, and falls off completely.

Touka sucks a breath as he slows, and looks at her. His eyes are slightly red, but bright. Whole.

“T-Touka-chan.” He only barely says it, but she feels it in all her veins. He takes her in, the whole of her. She recognizes that some part of her should be embarrassed, probably, but she’s not.

“Kaneki,” she responds. She smiles, and he swallows.

“What?” she asks.

“You…you’re…beautiful.” It’s a whisper, as if he can’t bear to say it any louder. His eyes start gleaming then, like glass. She reaches for his face, and he leans into her palm, and then, for some reason, he starts crying.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> written from an anon ask on tumblr who had an idea for a story of "what if kaneki came back to :re," which fit well with the 240/touka fic :)

It not…exactly  _secret_ …but it’s not — it’s not like he was trying to trick Yomo or anything like that. It’s just…he didn’t really know how things would really pan out, so he was just going to remain quiet until he was absolutely sure, but —

“Well?” Yomo asks, and Touka saves him, with a sigh.

“It’s nothing, he’s not sneaking out or anything, he’s just been sleeping in my room,” she explains, bluntly, and Yomo looks at her. At a time like this, Kaneki would expect that even Yomo’s face would betray… _something_. But he remains as calm as ever.

“I see,” he says. “Then, Ken, please move things into the spare room today, if you’re not going to use it. It’s crowded down here with all the coffee beans.”

“Oh…oh…okay,” Kaneki manages, barely.

“And I still think it would be a good idea to dye your hair sooner than later,” Yomo adds. It sounds like a soft request, but he’s been saying as much every day since he returned from foraging to find Kaneki sitting in the cafe kitchen with Touka, holding an upturned cup shakily over a growing puddle of coffee.

“Of course,” Kaneki coughs. “Sorry.” There’s really no good excuse for why it isn’t dyed already, except that whenever he and Touka have time to themselves, they usually…end up…being busy.

“I’ll be going then,” Yomo says, and maybe it’s just Kaneki’s own nervousness that makes him suspect Yomo is beating an unusually faster retreat than usual, but he doesn’t have much time to dwell on it because the bell on the door is ringing, and Touka is saying, “See? Not a big deal,” but of course she would say that, Touka is the kind of person that pulls no punches and didn’t even hesitate to ask him, afterward, that day, in the kitchen: “ _So, were you a virgin_?”

“I don’t know why you were so worried,” Touka continues, cleaning off the machine.

“Do you really not know?” Kaneki asks helplessly. “I mean…Yomo is…he protects you, right? He cares about you.”

Touka’s single eye regards him skeptically. “And?”

Kaneki grimaces. Maybe it’s different with ghouls. Despite the time that’s passed he has to admit there are a lot of things about them that he doesn’t quite get. In any case, Touka is glancing up and past him now, and Kaneki follows her gaze to the storefront and to the clock, which says they still have half an hour until opening time. He feels Touka step closer. He looks down and sees her looking up at him.

“Let’s do it one more time before the store opens?”

Direct, and yet her voice is so small and sweet that Kaneki feels himself blush. She rubs his back briskly — right at  _that place_ , which she can always find instantly, even over his clothing — and he sucks in a breath and nods quickly and Touka smiles at him beautifully and yanks his apron strings loose.

When Yomo returns after hours, he looks around at the cafe, and then at Kaneki’s hair. He makes no comment, except, “Thanks for moving the beans.”

:::

It’s not the return he always imagined. People are missing — Hide, and Yoshimura, and Hinami and Irimi and Koma and everyone else. But the days pass along calmly, even the ones where CCG investigators come to visit. He remembers, quickly, how to make coffee. Touka and Yomo take him in as easily and simply as if he had always been there, patient with his fumbling and even the nightmares that wake them all up at night. Eventually, the nightmares dwindle. He spends the evenings reading or re-reading the books in the cafe, which all, somehow, are to his taste. Soon, the books pile up at Touka’s — no, at his — no, at  _their_  beside, easy to reach even when Touka lies across him contentedly.

It’s not the return he always imagined, but other things exist in this life too, which he could have never dreamed — like waking up beside Touka, feeling the weird nice comfort of her body draped over him, listening to her breathe gently against his chest and combing her hair behind her ear in the sunlight. Sometimes he could cry at the sight of it. Other times, he finds his heart so overflowing that he doesn’t mind getting up and dressed, even if it’s cold, to answer whoever is banging on :re’s back door.

“Excuse me,” Kaneki says, “but please be quiet,” and then he says, “Oh, good morning, senpai,” and Nishiki yawns. He covers his mouth with a hand that’s holding a crinkling, bulging paper bag.

“Yeah, sure, good morning. Where the hell did Touka go last night?”

“Touka-chan?” Kaneki echoes. “Um…she was here.”

“ _Here_?”

“Well — she was sick,” Kaneki explains. “She was throwing up.”

Nishiki sighs before Kaneki can explain his suspicions that she’s trying to practice and steel her stomach before trying to meet Kosaka-san.

“Good thing I got her two, then,” he says, and hands the bag over. Kaneki takes it, with confusion, and uncurls the top to peer in, just to confirm what the smell and the grease stains are telling him.

“Burgers?”

“Sure. Can’t be too careful. Just pretend it’s one each.”

“Each?” Kaneki echoes.

“Well, yeah. Come on, are you stupid? One for Touka, and one for the brat.”

“Brat?”

They stare at each other. They realize it, at the name time. Nishiki groans.

“She’s going to fucking kill me.”

:::

It’s been a long while. He remembers, still, the first time that she stuffed meat into his mouth. The time he managed to stagger down to Anteiku’s cafe after fighting Nishiki, and saw her gingerly fold her sleeves over her bandage. The shock with which she looked at him as he held her at Aogiri, and then, the sharp, stabbing instant of disbelief and hurt when he told her he didn’t want her with him. The time the bandage fell from his eyes and he saw her, again, gazing up at him with peace and pleasure. The many times he’s woken up from dreams in which he’s lost everything and everyone and Touka held him, firmly, for as long as it took for him to stop shaking.

He sits on the edge of the bed, holding the bag. He waits, and eventually Touka begins to stir and stretch and wrinkle her nose.

“What’s that  _smell_ ,” she grumbles, and Kaneki shakes the bag indicatively, and Touka furrow her brows at him, and then jerks up. She props herself on her arms, looking at the bag, and then at Kaneki, and then sits properly, pulling the blanket over her chest.

“I’m gonna fucking kill him,” she says, half-heartedly. Kaneki smiles and gives her the bag.

“There’s two,” he says, “one for…one each.”

They are quiet.

“I want to ask you something,” Kaneki says, at the same time Touka says, “I need to tell you something,” and they look at each other, and fall silent.

“You first,” Kaneki offers, and for a second it looks like Touka won’t accept. She looks at the ceiling, taking a breath. Then she looks right at him.

“I’m pregnant,” she says. “It’s not…I wasn’t trying to keep it a  _secret_ …or trying to trick you or anything.” She looks down at the bag. “I just…don’t really know if it’ll be born properly anyway, so…I was just going to keep quiet until I knew for sure. Sorry.”

“It’s okay,” Kaneki tells her, and to prove it he reaches for Touka’s flushed cheek, and he holds it. She tips her head up and studies his expression, the smile he’s making for her, genuinely.

“I’m…I’m glad.”

“Really?”

“Yeah,” he realizes. He feels his smile broaden. “Really.”

She shuffles her weight. “Is this what you were going to ask about?”

“No,” he says. “What I wanted to ask you about was how ghouls get married.”

“Wh —  _what_?”

It takes a little while after than — to wade through her shock, to calm her embarrassment, to understand her explanation clearly and then assure her again that he’s serious, yes, he’s really, seriously, serious. He adds this moment to, to his list of times he never wants to forget: when she looks at him, with her uncertainty blooming into a soft, shy, small happiness. She lets the blanket fall, to expose one shoulder, and he inches close to her, and wraps his arms around her body. His body shivers as she leans against him. He kisses her gently, and then opens his mouth a little wider.

:::

Afterward, his shoulder aches as much as his chest. He presses his finger to the mark on her shoulder, which is healing, slowly. Even the edges of it, though, are already silvery, and his heart races a little to see it. His mark. On Touka.

She grimaces at him, uncomfortable with his staring, but before he can apologize she spreads her arms, and he breaks eye contact to lay against her happily. She embraces him. She rests her head on his and strokes his hair.

“Looks like we won’t have to dye your hair after all,” she says after a moment, and Kaneki stirs.

“Hmm?”

She has to reach around for her phone to take a picture so that he can see it. Even then, he has to zoom a bit. But they’re there, as clear as morning: black hairs, growing on top of his head, stark against the white.


End file.
